I watched 9 movies last week, and thank goodness not a single one of them was a Pink Panther film:
- “If ‘Eureka‘ is not completely successful,” wrote Roger Ebert, “if, indeed, it is sometimes merely silly and often confusing, maybe that’s the price we pay for Roeg’s intensity. At least it is never boring.”
- If Stage Door and now Kitty Foyle are any indication, I need to watch a lot more Ginger Rogers movies.
- Sing Sing is simply told, but with some fantastic, unshowy performances, and honest surprises.
- There’s too much world-building in Battle Beyond the Stars, but that’s a better problem to have than its opposite. The movie can’t ever shake off being a low-budget, over-stuffed Star Wars knockoff, but there’s just enough silly weirdness in the whole thing to be entertaining.
- John Ford’s The Informer is extremely melodramatic, but it’s grounded by Victor McLaglen’s conflicted performance.
- I love that the Adams Family make horror movies together, though Hell Hole is maybe my least favorite so far. As Brian Tallerico writes, “it’s kind of a disappointment” and “drain[ed]…of some of the DIY charm of the other flicks by Adams and Poser.” There are things to like here, some fun things the filmmakers get to do with their obviously bigger budget and some funny performances, but it also feels a little hollow, and the ending is a huge disappointment.
- There’s not a lot to say about The Great Dictator that hasn’t already been said, but there is nonetheless a lot to say for Chaplin’s bravery in making this film when he did, the bite of his satire, but also the lovely silent gags throughout. By his own admission, it’s not a movie he could have made only a few short years later, when the true horrors of the Nazi concentration camps were revealed, but for the moment in time it was made, it is an enduring masterpiece.
- Richard Harris is good in A Man Called Horse, and there’s something to be said for how much the film centers around the Sioux, given the time it was made, though it’s still a little a little disappointing. Not for nothing, as “a trashy, b-movie version of Dances With Wolves.”
- Pamela Anderson gives the best performance of her career in The Last Showgirl, which I think I’d be saying even if I had liked any of her past performances. It’s revelatory not just because we (maybe unfairly) don’t expect it from Anderson—she’s genuinely very good in this sad, complicated movie.
I also re-watched the thoroughly delightful My Fair Lady.
